'Scene Not Herd' Celebrates What's Not Seen at MuchMusic Video Awards

Posted on Jun 4th 2010 10:30AM by Steve McLean
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While the "Scene Not Herd" component of the CFC Worldwide Short Film Festival and the upcoming MuchMusic Video Awards are both honouring the best music videos of the past year, that's about the only thing they have in common.

While such mainstream names as Drake, Hedley, Justin Bieber and Lady Gaga are among the MMVA nominees, Scene Not Herd features underviewed videos from Canadian artists like Zeus and Gentleman Reg and an international roster of clips from relative unknowns including Noisia, Die Antwoord and Mistabishi. The big names at Scene Not Herd are Coldplay, Metric, K'Naan, Massive Attack and LCD Soundsystem.

"Lady Gaga's made some good videos and worked with some great directors, but they're so well-known that to show one in a film festival like this would be redundant," Scene Not Herd programmer Sandy Hunter tells Spinner.

"People are coming to the CFC Worldwide Short Film Festival not just for this program, but to see art presented by curators that is somehow innovative, exotic and visually appealing. There's no place for top 20 pop in this program."

Hunter makes note of Metric's 'Help I'm Alive' and LCD Soundsystem's 'Drunk Girls,' but also highlights two clips from much more obscure acts. Nobody Beats the Drum's 'Grindin'' is an instrumental dance song with a video that "looks like animation, but it's all stop-motion." But his personal favourite is Flairs' 'Truckers Delight,' an electro-dance instrumental with an "eight-bit glitch techno poop video."

When asked about what he thinks is the most influential music video of all time, Hunter falls in line with respondents to a recent MySpace poll and names Michael Jackson's 'Thriller.'

"It was the first time that a substantial budget was applied to a video," he explains. "It was directed by John Landis, who did 'An American Werewolf In London.' It was a known filmmaker moving into music video, when it had previously been done by friends of the band or the band's A&R man. It was the first production of scale.

"'Thriller' was a late 20th century piece of art wrapped around a pop song that was and remains quite special. But if Scene Not Herd was around when it came out, I still wouldn't have included it because everybody knew it."

Click here to find out more about Scene Not Herd's music video line-up, all of which can easily be found online.

Scene Not Herd will be screened at Toronto's Cumberland Cinema at 9:30PM, June 4. The Miley Cyrus co-hosted MMVAs air on MuchMusic at 9PM, June 20.